Choosing a major is serious business. It has to be something that actually appeals to you and plays to your talents.
Otherwise, you’re in for a big waste of time and money—not to mention four plus years of school that feel like six times that many when you hate what you’re doing. It’s important to understand both sides of an angle. Although some people feel like you should only consider the benefits of something (because the negative aspects will make you not want to do such and such a thing), understanding the cons can make you more ready to face them. And for you, it might not be a con!
Pro: Variety of Options
Getting a marketing degree not only gives you an incredible amount of options once you enter the career field, but you have quite a variety of choices in school as well. First and foremost, there are hundreds of good schools with excellent business programs that let you study marketing. This means you can find an environment that suits you, with people who support and challenge you, in an area that appeals to you. If you’re returning to school or trying to mix school with family life, it can be difficult to find a program that matches with your needs, instead of making you meet its requirements. The more options you have, the better.
Con: The Work
It’s the kind of degree you can skate through or actually put your nose to the grindstone and excel at. This can make for a stressful environment and long hours. Additionally, much of the work in these kinds of classes requires working with a group to mimic the way a business runs. If you can’t handle working with a crew of people who don’t care as much as you or can’t handle working in a group period, there’s a good chance that dislike is going to translate to your career. Which means you might not be as successful as you might hope in big business.
Pro: Plenty of Career Options
Lots of places offer internships for business majors, which looks great on a resume when you go out looking for your adult job. Not all of them pay, but some of them will. Marketing positions can be quite lucrative, which will, of course, be good for your student loans.
Plus, there are about a million different career paths you can take. You might be more inclined toward the selling of products aspect of a business. Maybe what you want is to help actually come up with new commodities. Or maybe you want to help design promotional material. Majoring in marketing opens up a wide, wide world of later positions and educates you about them, so you know where you want to be rather than having to play a trial and error game while trying to pay your bills.
Con: Standing Out From the Pack
Because there are so many good business schools and marketing programs and excellent jobs, there are tons of marketing majors. Distinguishing yourself from all the other students in your program - and once you hit the working world, all those other hundreds of programs - can be a major challenge (pun intended). Which means if you aren’t willing to put the work in, you’re just going to be one of thousands of indistinguishable others.
Additionally, since there are so many routes you can take, a lot of experts recommend double majoring in marketing and something else - if you know you want to take the promotional route, perhaps go for advertising as well. It’s a lot of work, and long hours, but if it’s what you truly want to do, it all turns out to be worth it.
